The disclosure relates to a technique for processing a flow in a communications network, and, more particularly, communication of packets across a communications network. An increasing number of services are being deployed over access points to a communications network using packets, for example to the Internet, whether they be fixed or mobile. These services relate for example to voice calls, video file transfers, games and Web Services. By their nature, they have different quality of service requirements in terms of delay and of packet loss rates.
The IETF, acronym for “Internet Engineering Task Force”, recommends the implementation of a technique called Diffserv (“Differentiated Services”) for differentiating flows relating to a service according to the required quality of service. This technique is specified in RFC 2475 and allows the packets of a flow relating to a service to be explicitly marked according to the required quality of service. The flows are thus grouped into different classes of service. Upon receiving a packet, a device on the network is able to determine a class of quality of service and, during processing of the packet, to apply a processing procedure according to the class of quality of service determined. Certain flows can thus be allocated priority processing by the equipment on the network. In view of the fact that each packet must be explicitly marked, this technique is very difficult to implement in a network.
There is therefore a need for a technique allowing differentiated processing of the flows transiting at a point of a communications network to be facilitated.